Talk of mysteries! Think of our life in nature—daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it—rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! The actual world! The common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? Where are we?

Every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things.

Much reading is an oppression of the mind, and extinguishes the natural candle, which is the reason of so many senseless scholars in the world.

A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.

Let thy speech be short, comprehending much in few words

Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground floor.